Once an auto-rickshaw driver, Jaipur man spent Rs 40 lakh in seven years only on number plates: Here’s his rags-to-riches story

In 2011, 37-year-old Rrahul Tanejaa from Jaipur bought his first luxury car – a BMW 5 series. The bigger attraction, however, was the number plate of this car which cost Rrahul a whopping Rs 10.31 lakh for a premium number — RJ 14 CP 0001. Since then, Rrahul who runs an event management company called ‘Live Creations’, in Jaipur has spent around Rs 40 lakh to get number plates for his four cars. “In 2011, I bought my first car, it was a BMW 5 series for which I spent Rs 10.31 lakh. Then in 2012, I bought a Skoda Laura for my wife,” he said in conversation with FinancialExpress.com. Both these cars had number plates ending with ‘0001’.

His third car was a BMW 7 series again had the same digits. Rrahul has recently bought a Jaguar for Rs 1.5 crore on March 25 and waited for almost one month before getting the fancy number for his vehicle – RJ 45 CG 0001.

Rrahul doesn’t believe that there is an obsession with number ‘1’ and thinks of it just as a way to keep himself motivated. “Mujhe life mein number 1 hi banana hai…I believe in being number one in whatever I do. Toh isliye saari gaadiyon ka number 1 hi hai (I want to be number 1 in life so all my cars have that number),” he said.

However, his fetish for number one is not just limited to cars. In 1996, when Rahul bought his first scooter, he made sure that the sum of all the digits of the number plate comes out to be 1. “Back then, I didn’t have that much money but I made sure that the total of the digits remain 1. The scooter’s number was RJ 14 23M 2323 (2+3+2+3 is 10) which in single digit comes to 1,” he added.

Not just this, the 37-year-old businessman also owns four phones with the last seven digits of all the numbers as 1.

However, all of this didn’t come easy for Rrahul. His father used to repair punctures for a living when Rrahul was young and later started driving a tempo. Rrahul left his house when he was 11-years-old and had to struggle for survival. Lack of money made him do odd jobs for a living. Rrahul said that he sold kites during Makar Sankranti, rakhis during Raksha Bandhan, colours during Holi and crackers during Diwali.

As things didn’t improve, he also started driving an auto-rickshaw for extra income. Since he didn’t have a license, he used to drive between 9 PM and midnight to avoid the risk of being caught by the police. “I had moved to a house where the owner had an auto-rickshaw. Since I didn’t have a license, I used to drive after 9 PM,” he recalled.

When asked whether he ever ran into trouble with the police, Rrahul laughed and said, “Nahi…nahi….Thank God! Kabhi Aisa Nahi Hua (Thank God! It never happened).”

His fortunes took a turn when a friend asked Rrahul to try his hand at modelling. “I was decent-looking and tall so a friend asked me to try a hand in acting and modelling. I gave my first audition on 20th June, 1998 for a fashion show at Raja Park in Jaipur,” he added.

Rrahul landed the job and since then, there has been no looking back. “Within the next few years I had won Mr Jaipur and was the top model in Rajasthan. This is when people started suggesting to me that I move to Delhi or Mumbai for bigger oppurtunities…lekin mujhe pata tha I won’t be able to survive so I went into backstage job,” he added.

He started organising shows and it was in 2005 when he landed his first big event with a budget of Rs 1 crore by Wincare Remedies. “Fir bas….uske baad premium weddings (That’s it! After that I started organising premium weddings),” he said.